Remembering legendary Maine guides

By V. Paul Reynolds

The Northwoods Sporting Journal, in its August issue, published for the first time anywhere a complete listing of Maine’s Legendary Maine Guides, starting with the honorific’s namesake, Wiggie Robinson, who received the title posthumously in 2009. The article also contained photos of most of these legendary guides.

The Wiggie Robinson Legendary Maine Guide Award is presented annually at the Maine Professional Guides Association annual banquet. Winners must have been a Registered Maine Guide for 20 years and been an active guide for at least 10 of those years. Along with guiding, winners must be active in the local or outdoor community, or active on boards or committees that enhance and promote the importance of Maine’s outdoor resources. 

Working Maine guides are a special breed, with or without the title of Legendary Maine Guide. The ones who make a living guiding hunters, fishermen and outdoor recreationalists of every stripe are accomplished woodsmen and women who wouldn’t be doing what they are doing if they did not have an abiding passion for the Maine outdoors, as well as the attendant ability to do their jobs well.

All of these hardworking, licensed entrepreneurs deserve our respect and even admiration. For this reason, it is disappointing that over the years the Legendary Maine Guide award has not gotten the primacy and public visibility it deserves from either the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, which selects the recipients, nor the Maine Professional Guides Association, which represents our professional licensed guides. In a couple instances over the years, the presentation of the award was lost in the shuffle or simply not followed up by appropriate press releases and photos to the state media.

This fundamental dereliction does a disservice, not only to the stature of the award but to the memory of the late Wiggie Robinson and those still-living Legendary Guides who have followed Wiggie’s sterling example.

There is an easy way to patch this void. We suggest that both MDIF&W and the MPGA simply publish on their respective websites and annually maintain this complete standing list of Legendary Maine Guides. These legendary guides, after all, are the best of the best, and they represent our state’s outdoor heritage and legacy. Their names are part of this history and ought not to get lost in the daily shuffle.

Wilmot “Wiggie” Robinson (posthumously) 2009

Gil Gilpatrick 2010

Gary Corson 2011

Gardner DeFoe 2012

Matthew P. Libby 2013

Don Dudley 2014

Danny Legere 2015

Richard Scribner 2016

Donald E. Helstrom, Jr. 2017

Lance Wheaton 2018

Bonnie Holding 2019

Carroll Ware 2020

Polly Mahoney 2022

The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide and host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network. He has authored three books. Online purchase information is available at www.maineoutdoorpublications.com.